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Piano Sonata in A major, Op 101

Introduction

This is the first of Beethoven’s five piano sonatas generally regarded as belonging to his ‘late’ period, when he rose to new heights of sophistication and ingenuity, with more complex forms and more polyphonic textures. Every note generally has melodic as well as harmonic importance, and fugal devices are more prevalent than before.

The sonata was begun about the middle of 1815, but was set aside for a time before being taken up again the following summer; it was completed in November 1816, as indicated by the date on the autograph score. At this time, as seen in Op 90, Beethoven was attempting to introduce German terms rather than the conventional Italian ones, and so for publication each movement was provided with a German tempo indication (as well as an Italian one, to assist sales outside German-speaking countries). He also wanted a German term to replace the Italian ‘pianoforte’, and after extensive consultation decided on ‘Hammer-Klavier’, although the term has since become associated almost exclusively with his next sonata (Op 106). There was also much discussion about the title for the sonata, and Beethoven suggested facetiously that it should be called ‘The difficult-to-play Sonata in A’. In the end this title was not adopted, but the sonata certainly is difficult to play. It was dedicated to Baroness Dorothea Ertmann, a close friend of Beethoven and an excellent pianist.

The first movement, marked ‘Somewhat lively and with the most intimate feeling’, is deceptively simple and gentle, in a very concise sonata form but with textures that seem to owe something to the preludes of Bach, which Beethoven had learnt as a boy. Instead of the usual minuet or scherzo for the middle movement, there appears a march (‘Rather lively, in march time’) in the remote key of F major. The middle section of this movement forms a smooth and sweet contrast to the march, and during much of it the two hands play exactly the same melody but at slightly different times (a device known as ‘canon’). The music then leads back to the march, which returns unchanged.

The finale, a much longer, more complex movement in several sections, begins as if it is to be a slow movement in A minor (‘Slow and full of longing’), and it contains one of Beethoven’s earliest indications of the soft pedal. After only twenty bars, however, the soft pedal is gradually released as the music gives way to a recall of the first movement (‘Tempo of the first movement’), seeming to suggest a distant memory of events long past. This brief recall increases in energy until it bursts into the finale proper (‘Fast but not too fast, and with determination’). This is in sonata form, but much more expansive than the first movement. Its most outstanding feature is its central fugato (again recalling Bach), which forms almost the entire development section and gradually builds up from a pianissimo bass entry to a mighty fortissimo climax a full hundred bars later. Here Beethoven for the first time ever uses a low E, a note that had only recently been added to the compass of new pianos. To highlight the note, he actually labelled it as ‘Contra E’ in the score. The low E reappears just before the end, this time pianissimo, before being interrupted by the final fortissimo chords.